Building Decentralized Fog Computing-Based Smart Parking Systems: From Deterministic Propagation Modeling to Practical Deployment

Abstract

The traditional process of finding a vacant parking slot is often inefficient: it increases driving time, traffic congestion, fuel consumption and exhaust emissions. To address such problems, smart parking systems have been proposed to help drivers to find available parking slots faster using latest sensing and communications technologies. However, the deployment of the communications infrastructure of a smart parking is not straightforward due to multiple factors that may affect wireless propagation. Moreover, a smart parking system needs to provide not only accurate information on available spots, but also fast responses while guaranteeing the system availability even in the case of lacking connectivity. This article describes the development of a decentralized low-latency smart parking system: from its conception, design and theoretical simulation, to its empirical validation. Thus, this work first characterizes a real-world scenario and proposes a fog computing and Internet of Things (IoT) based communications architecture to provide smart parking services. Next, a thorough analysis on the wireless channel properties is carried out by means of an in-house developed deterministic 3D-Ray Launching (3D-RL) tool. The obtained results are validated through a real-world measurement campaign and then the communications architecture is implemented by using ZigBee sensor nodes. The implemented architecture also makes use of Bluetooth Low Energy beacons, an Android app, a decentralized database and fog computing gateways, whose performance is evaluated in terms of response latency and processing rate. Results show that the proposed system is able to deliver information to the drivers fast, with no need for relying on remote servers. As a consequence, the presented development methodology and communications evaluation tool can be useful for future smart parking developers, which can determine the optimal locations of the wireless transceivers during the simulation stage and then deploy a system that can provide fast responses and decentralized services.

Bi2Bi Communication: Toward Encouragement of Sustainable Smart Mobility

“…The propagation parameters are calculated along the path of each ray, which interacts with all the elements within the scenario, creating radio propagation phenomena such as reflection, refraction, and diffraction. These characteristics, added to the implementation of the material properties of all the elements within the scenario (conductivity and permittivity) lead to an efficient and robust technique already employed and validated in many different environments, including large urban environments [30] [31].…”

An IoT Based Intelligent Parking System for the Unutilized Parking Area With Real-Time Monitoring Using Mobile and Web Application

“…With driver behavior analysis and parking traffic prediction, this system handles parking demands by allocating available parking lots with improved efficiency. The authors of [20] suggested a decentralized parking system that uses fog computing and IoT to provide parking services. The system validates real-world parking traffic with a characterized traffic using the 3D-Ray Launching (3D-RL) tool and provides parking services accordingly.…”

Enabling Fog–Blockchain Computing for Autonomous-Vehicle-Parking System: A Solution to Reinforce IoT–Cloud Platform for Future Smart Parking

“…The Internet of Things (IoT) empowers smart connectivity and advanced communication paradigms in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) to, among other things, enable well-performing intelligent transportation systems (ITSs), including SP systems, which are considered integral parts of innovative smart-city projects [1,2]. The IoT is a generic platform that is used to overcome the technological limitations of existing transportation systems, such as SP systems, traffic-congestion systems, and energy-consumption systems; thereby, IoT-enabled features, such as monitoring, controlling, and data analytics, can strengthen the performances of larger SP systems in metropolitan areas [3].…”

“…For example, the SP system can play an essential role in saving drivers time when searching for parking in urban areas on demand; this can be of great assistance to minimizing traffic congestion and saving energy (e.g., gasoline), which further leads to a reduction in air pollution. As a part of the SP system, the parking payment as per the occupation of the driver can easily be made, with some built-in payment methods online, which therefore saves the driver time (instead of waiting in a long row), without interrupting other drivers [1,4]. and ensure an end-to-end information stream (for example, the successful transactions between edge devices to fog to cloud to end users, and vice versa) [11,26].…”

“…However, building and managing such a crowded vehicular or transportation system (for example, a largescale IoT-enabled SP system) through a centric platform such as the cloud is not a longterm effective solution to address the limitations of computation, storage, and cybersecurity [21][22][23][24]. For that, the introduction of the emerging fog and blockchain technologies can be an inclusive solution to overcoming the challenges of IoT-cloud-centric platforms to build smart transportation and to manage its current and future demands (for example, SP systems) [1,21]. This study provides inspiration for building and managing future SP systems, and specifically for accommodating AVs searching for parking, both indoors and outdoors, in metropolitan areas.…”